The Cops break the law all through this movie. They interrogate a guy all night without letting him have access to a lawyer. They follow a guy around and search him whenever they feel like it. All kinds of stuff that was illegal in the 50's and is illegal now.
shareActually there was not necessarily a right to have an attorney during questioning back then. That's what the Supreme Court's so-called Miranda decision in 1966 was about. Same with the searches. Of course, Max Troy could have gotten his lawyer to file a complaint about such harassment and a court would probably have stayed the police from continuing it. But Jack Webb wasn't concerned with such plot complications, let alone civil liberties. He also knew the audience wouldn't care because the victims of this treatment were clearly the bad guys.
As Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide puts it, "While investigating brutal murder, Sgt. Friday and Officer Frank Smith ignore 57 varieties of civil liberties; feature film version of classic TV show evokes its era better than almost anything."
I wrote to Mr. Maltin about that comment and he said it was a joke. I still have the letter.
How many of Starkie's civil liberties did Troy and Davitt violate?
Like hobnob said, this movie was made years before the right to counsel. Still, it makes me laugh when they follow Stacy Harris' character around for days and shake him down on the sidewalk several times a day; today, both Friday and Smith would be looking for work when his legal team was done with them.
shareIt's also in stark contrast to the image of the LAPD Webb himself tried to convey in the late 60s reincarnation of the TV series, when everything was very by the book and ostentatiously "fair", completely contradicting his previous depiction of the force, yet without any overt irony or awareness on his part. By 1967 Sgt. Friday wouldn't have been caught dead pulling a Max Troy on some suspect hour after hour.
The 1954 film was actually rather brutally frank in its depiction of police harassment and disregard of civil liberties. The real L.A. Confidential. It was so blatant I wonder whether it might have sent the "wrong" (i.e., anti-police) message to audiences even then.
Ask Miller Starkie.
shareThe problem with your comments on this thread, montgomerydou55, is that you want and expect the police to have the same disregard for people's rights that the criminals have. You want them to break the law, on the notion that the end justifies the means. And unfortunately some police do go over the edge, which only makes it harder to put criminals away, not to mention making things worse for the huge majority of honest cops trying to do their hard job right.
Part of being a policeman is to uphold the law -- which includes their having to abide by the law as well. If you want a police force unhindered by respect for the law, there are plenty of places you can move where the police can do anything they want to anyone they want, and rights are a quaint joke.
I assume you saw the movie, in particular the very beginning; if you consider yourself enlightened enough to expound on the proper course for Friday and Smith to have taken, tell me. It was only an accident that Max Troy died of gastric cancer; perhaps such stories should end with the culprit (if you concede that a criminal is guilty) accidentally locking himself in a jail cell.
For a murder conspirator to whine that the police are harassing him by constantly having him empty his pockets--to me that's mighty damned intolerant.
Stop digging yourself in deeper; your comments are only getting more ridiculous, asinine and removed from reality.
Cops are agents of the law and as such are supposed to uphold the law, something which evidently means nothing to you. Bad cops make for bad justice. What Friday and Smith did was harassment, pure and simple; it yielded no evidence and served no purpose other than to annoy the slippery Troy. I doubt actual cops (not Jack Webb's caricatures of them) ever bothered to do this kind of stuff over and over in real life. Troy's complaints don't matter. Effective police work does. Instead of trying to dig up better evidence against Troy they were wasting time, manpower and resources playing games with a murderer.
The evidence they finally got against Troy didn't come from such pointless antics but from real detective work they were to busy to do themselves. Just their luck, or his, Troy died before they could finally do something productive.
You are forgetting about the doctrine of respondeat superior. Just before Friday and Smith started following Max Troy around and having him empty his pockets periodically, Captain Hamilton had ordered them to conduct a "bumper-to-bumper trail" on him. Vent your spleen on Hamilton, not on Friday and Smith.
shareThis was 12 years before Miranda and things were much different back then and it's a good assumption some still goes on now. LAPD was notorious for its "hat squads" which literally slugged a confession out of someone, often for minor or petty crimes.
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